[ZDP] ZDP-Tools: Discussion about Book, Part and Chapter continued.

[Maik.Röder]

Hi !

> > You have trapped me here. As I said earlier the solution is making
> sections.
> > Sections can be placed in Books, Parts, Chapters, SubChapter and
> SubSubchapters.
> > This way each of these structure objects are responsible for displaying
> > the Sections differently.
> 
> Well, there is my confusion... Since Parts, Chapters, SubChapters .... are
> in fact the same, why then should they display their Sections differently?

Indeed, they display their Sections all the same, but they do display themselves
and their children differently ! It was wron to call the content "Section", because
a Section can seen as the same kind of thing as a Part and Chapter only a little
bit smaller. I would say we just need to reuse DocumentFolders to contain the
domain objects, and forget about Sections.

> As I was working on the ZBook classes I found the following :
> 
> Chapter I content stays as default
>    Chapter I.1 content stays as default
>        Chapter I.1.1 in content we place the text
>        Chapter I.1.2 in content we place the text
>    Chapter I.2 in content we plaxe the text
>    Chapter I.3 content stays as default
>       Chapter...

As you can see Chapter I has a number "I", and none of the
children under Chapter I know this !

If you would make Chapter I a Part and Chapter I.1 a Chapter,
then Chapter would only store the 1 ! Because in the breadcrumbs
you already have I > 1 so you know where you are. 

When you move a Chapter around, maybe to another Part, then
you just cut and paste, and adjust the chapter number which
is maybe "1" to "2". But you should not store the "I" of "I.1"
in a Chapter, because the information about the "I" is wrong
when you put the Chapter into another Part.

> Browsing to Chapter I shows nicely the different chapters inside it.
> Browsing to Chapter I.1 also
> Browsing to Chapter I.1.1 shows the text
> 
> ....
> 
> About Chapter as I and chapter as 1.
> 
> I think a solution to this when using above system is making another ZClass
> (or just a file) which allows to define that when level =1 used text is I,
> level 2 = 1, default = 1.

In my opinion designing for change is the best solution here. We have defined
a nice XML file with Part->Chapter->Subchapter, and we need to mirror this using
ZClasses. The only point that was somewhat open is where the content should 
go.
I would say that the content should be the smallest manageable piece of information.
We don't need to make the smallest manageable piece a paragraph, because this
would mean some explosion of objects, but I think if we define the smallest piece
of manageable information a DocumentFolder, then it is left open what size it can 
have. In a Part it may be small, in a Chapter long, and in a Subchapter a medium,
but this is up to the author anyway.
DocumentFolders can be placed inside Books, Parts, Chapters and Subchapters. So, inside
all these ZClasses, we collect all contained DocumentFolders and display them. This way,
for example a Chapter can be split into two DocumentFolders, which are from two authors,
and maybe it will be necessary to put them into a Subchapter for themselves at one
time in the future, so everything is open to change.

So, Books, Part, Chapters and Subchapters are only Controllers who control
the contained domain objects DocumentFolder.

As I said earlier, what we have now is sufficient:

Book
Part
Chapter

We don't need to make extra Subchapters now, because it may be sufficient that it
is possible to place multiple DocumentFolders into the Chapters to emulate Subchapters
for the time being. Once we decide we need Subchapter, we just rename the Chapter to
Subchapter and create a new ZClass Chapter.

So, everything stays as it is, and we don't need to worry about numbering
and depth. We just put DocumentFolders into the existing ZClasses and collect
them in the existing Books, Parts and Chapters.

Greetings,

Maik Röder